Have you ever been really excited about something?Has there ever been something that you recently witnessed that you found just incredible?
Have you ever known one of those little-known-facts that you figure no one else will know, and you just can’t wait to share this acquired knowledge with someone?
Have you ever known one of those little-known-facts that you figure no one else will know, and you just can’t wait to share this acquired knowledge with someone?
Assuming we can all fall under one of these categories, if not make a similar scenario of our own, we all have this deep desire and urge to share information with family, friends, and even perfect strangers! We find things interesting and we contain this natural human yearning and willingness to tell others what we know.
Our motives to share this knowledge may vary from: wanting someone to share the same emotions as us, or perhaps to impress others with stories of things we’ve seen or heard, or quite simply we want to use our knowledge to put others in their place and let know we’re better than them.
Let’s begin with the possible first and second motivations. In the situation where you want to share your joys with others or impress them with your stories, how do they typically respond?
If you’re lucky… they will respond just the way you’d like them to. They’ll be excited for or with you, they’ll smile, laugh, give you a hug, or they might even repeat your story or facts immediately following because they feel it needs to be recognized by many more people.
Our motives to share this knowledge may vary from: wanting someone to share the same emotions as us, or perhaps to impress others with stories of things we’ve seen or heard, or quite simply we want to use our knowledge to put others in their place and let know we’re better than them.
Let’s begin with the possible first and second motivations. In the situation where you want to share your joys with others or impress them with your stories, how do they typically respond?
If you’re lucky… they will respond just the way you’d like them to. They’ll be excited for or with you, they’ll smile, laugh, give you a hug, or they might even repeat your story or facts immediately following because they feel it needs to be recognized by many more people.
In the case of you wanting to impress your listeners, they will hopefully drop their jaw in amazement, or give you this higher level of respect on the cool guy bar. They recognize your experiences and know you better for the things you’ve done, seen or heard.
But how about all the times they don’t react the way you’d like them to? You show them something of value to you; you share a personal story that effected your whole life; you tell them about something incredible that you saw, heard happened to someone, or a cool fact that you think is so completely out of this world, or maybe it is something as simple as telling them that you’ve drank over 100 coffees during this season of Roll Up The Rim and have won nothing while a co-worker of yours has already won 5 free coffees. And their response is this,
“That’s not a big deal, I haven’t won anything either and I’ve probably had even more than that.”
It’s simply unresponsive and leaves you either in an argument or you just wishing you had never opened your big stupid mouth in the first place.
Why do they respond this way? As a victim of this type of reaction, I feel that one of the only reasons… beyond that they didn’t intend for it to come across the way you took it… is the third motivation that I mentioned just a minute ago. They are in essence responding to you in this way to simply put you in your place and let you know that you’re no better than them. In fact, through their response, they just might be telling you that they are actually better than you because they either already knew what you just told them, they know something that trumps your cool story or fact, or they will pretend that what you said wasn’t important at all, when in actual fact, they are just stubborn because they wish they knew it before you and they don’t want to give you any credit for what you just shared with them.
If you are a victim of this response, I’m sorry, because I know how painful this can be. It’s crushing when you tell somebody something that you are so excited about, and it’s just tossed in the trash like last weeks paper. It really can cause you to think twice about sharing your excitements with this person again because it’s easy to anticipate what their response will be like.
Like I said, we all have things we want to say, but it’s difficult when others aren’t willing to listen and share in our joy, but would rather correct us and put us in our place telling us that ‘we’re no better than them.’ I know these are often the feelings of our predators because… although I feel I am a big victim, I too inflict just as much pain upon my friends.
As I identify all the times that I have been hurt in this way, I recognize that I am in fact no different than them. I am as big a jerk as the next guy. But through this learning and new understanding, I am trying to teach myself to be mindful, respectful and be excited when others are excited. When someone tells me something that I don’t believe or I know to be untrue, I want to think about my response before I go correcting them and belittling them. I want to try to remember to ask myself ‘why?’ Why do I want to correct them? Is it their sake or mine? And in what tone will I correct them in? How will what I say really effect them? These are the questions we all need to be asking ourselves because as Mother Theresa best said, “The greatest suffering is to feel alone, unwanted and unloved.”
As we take a deeper look at things, we will quickly find that this life lesson is represented best through Jesus while living here on Earth. From blind Bartimaeus [Mark 10] to mourning over the death of Lazzarus [John 11], Jesus listened whole heartedly to what people had to say to Him and felt the emotions they felt, and like the woman who grabbed at His cloak [Luke 8], even among the most hectic times, Jesus stopped what He was doing and was considerate. Loving and caring, without dismissing what any one had to say, in doing so telling them that what they have to say is a big deal.
But how about all the times they don’t react the way you’d like them to? You show them something of value to you; you share a personal story that effected your whole life; you tell them about something incredible that you saw, heard happened to someone, or a cool fact that you think is so completely out of this world, or maybe it is something as simple as telling them that you’ve drank over 100 coffees during this season of Roll Up The Rim and have won nothing while a co-worker of yours has already won 5 free coffees. And their response is this,
“That’s not a big deal, I haven’t won anything either and I’ve probably had even more than that.”
It’s simply unresponsive and leaves you either in an argument or you just wishing you had never opened your big stupid mouth in the first place.
Why do they respond this way? As a victim of this type of reaction, I feel that one of the only reasons… beyond that they didn’t intend for it to come across the way you took it… is the third motivation that I mentioned just a minute ago. They are in essence responding to you in this way to simply put you in your place and let you know that you’re no better than them. In fact, through their response, they just might be telling you that they are actually better than you because they either already knew what you just told them, they know something that trumps your cool story or fact, or they will pretend that what you said wasn’t important at all, when in actual fact, they are just stubborn because they wish they knew it before you and they don’t want to give you any credit for what you just shared with them.
If you are a victim of this response, I’m sorry, because I know how painful this can be. It’s crushing when you tell somebody something that you are so excited about, and it’s just tossed in the trash like last weeks paper. It really can cause you to think twice about sharing your excitements with this person again because it’s easy to anticipate what their response will be like.
Like I said, we all have things we want to say, but it’s difficult when others aren’t willing to listen and share in our joy, but would rather correct us and put us in our place telling us that ‘we’re no better than them.’ I know these are often the feelings of our predators because… although I feel I am a big victim, I too inflict just as much pain upon my friends.
As I identify all the times that I have been hurt in this way, I recognize that I am in fact no different than them. I am as big a jerk as the next guy. But through this learning and new understanding, I am trying to teach myself to be mindful, respectful and be excited when others are excited. When someone tells me something that I don’t believe or I know to be untrue, I want to think about my response before I go correcting them and belittling them. I want to try to remember to ask myself ‘why?’ Why do I want to correct them? Is it their sake or mine? And in what tone will I correct them in? How will what I say really effect them? These are the questions we all need to be asking ourselves because as Mother Theresa best said, “The greatest suffering is to feel alone, unwanted and unloved.”
As we take a deeper look at things, we will quickly find that this life lesson is represented best through Jesus while living here on Earth. From blind Bartimaeus [Mark 10] to mourning over the death of Lazzarus [John 11], Jesus listened whole heartedly to what people had to say to Him and felt the emotions they felt, and like the woman who grabbed at His cloak [Luke 8], even among the most hectic times, Jesus stopped what He was doing and was considerate. Loving and caring, without dismissing what any one had to say, in doing so telling them that what they have to say is a big deal.
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